fasstrack

If one is Invitation I guess I am. I'll look it up. Thanks. If one is Invitation I guess I am. I'll look it up. Thanks. Just googled it. That's the one. Used to own it, too. Now what the hell was the one with Joe and the black pooch on front cover? Black Narcissus, I think. What can I tell you? Age-triggered CRS...

What's the record on Milestone under Joe Hen's name where the last track is he and Woody playing Invitation live in S.F. (I think)? George Cables is on the live track. It's either Power to The People or Black Narcissus. The cover had Joe posing with, I think, a black Airedale (sp?). Unless I dreamt it ....

He had those things for sure, and those were his two main main on trumpet. But the harmonic aspects of his playing, which came from other sources but weren't being done on trumpet, these were his big contribution to me, right along with that passion and excitement. Emotion is everything, but can't be analyzed (fortunately) like notes, chords, etc.

I just watched the film, and found it superb and very moving. Not just a talking heads joint. It really captured Nica and her relationship with Monk. The conceit of the great-niece discovering her great-aunt and picking up the pieces to make this after Nica's death works very well, also. Not corny at all. I'm going to give this to someone as a present, maybe someone who doesn't know about jazz, to give a prime example of how special the people can be. I feel you, dog. But it's still a bad precedent not to pay. Not everyone is a bad guy and it's a sign of respect to pay a lousy $15 or whatever for something we believe in---especially with so little to believe in nowadays. That's all it is.

I watched it when it was broadcast on HBO, DVR-ed it for one more viewing, was glad I did, enjoyable enough, but really have no burning desire to see it again, on YouTube or DVR. I think my moral obligation is complete, no? I don't know. I'm not God. All I meant is that we should pay or at least think about it rather than just take. At least our generation can understand that. That's as far as I go with this. (Descends from soapbox)....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaCiENv8YGk&feature=related Here's the entire film, which I post with the greatest reluctance since I believe people should be paid for their good works. Youtube makes it harder and harder. The lecture ends there, but on the honor system if you enjoy it will some of you purchase rather than download it? I will do the same, that's a pledge. I especiall will since I met Nica and visited the home, experienced at least a little what it was like in the place. I wish I could have actually gotten to know her. Anyway, bless her for all she did for this music and its practitioners.

I forgot to mention Eric Dolphy's Iron Man as an example of young Woody already stretching while learning. Eric himself is too much! You can see how Woody got interested in intervals as a tool between Dolphy and Trane. For the more mature period I like Woody III (Columbia). Nice writing and ensembles. Also I really recommend the short-lived Concert Ensemble. They recorded a few times. I used to play Woody's tunes and I think my favorite is Katrina Ballerina. I'm gonna pull that one out again. It's really lyrical and IMO had the best qualities of the kind of tunes guys like Woody and Joe Hen were writing in the '70s.

He was out on the edge in the sense that from his earliest recordings (mid '60s in his earliest 20s) he pulled away from his heroes (mostly Freddie Hubbard, but Lee Morgan too) and took it somewhere else harmonically. Freddie and Lee were both a bit more diatonic. Freddie was a virtouoso and also got things from sax players, especially Trane. But his harmony was still basically pretty 'in' and diatonic. Woody took it a little further for me. He was getting ideas like wider intervals, outside pentatonics, 4ths, certain sequences, from guys like Dolphy who he hung with, Trane, who he admired, and composers like Berg, Bartok, and Kodaly. What he and McCoy, Dolphy, and others were into harmonically was old news in classical music but pretty new to jazz. McCoy was a leader in that direction. But a young trumpet player picking up on that had to have vision, and he added his own things. Unity, from ’65, was definitely a departure, and Woody was pretty damn young on that. It shows where everyone involved were heading: more open chordal structures where they could be more chromatic, go in and out with pentatonics, use Spanish-sounding scales. The Moontrane was a good recap of what he was doing around then. All pretty fresh in mainstream playing around '65. But Unity was also very much in the tradition, my point about Woody. Visionary from early in the game but also grounded and a student of the past. What the hell, they're all great players. Jazz is way better for Freddie, Lee, Woody having passed through. But just to clarify...

Stormy Weather is from Imagination (1987). Cast: Kirk Lightsey, Steve Turre, Carl Allen, Ray Drummond. CD Universe link: http://www.cduniverse.com/search/xx/music/pid/6141414/a/Imagination.htm

Bye Bye Blackbird, live at the Keystone Korner, 1981. (See above).

I've been an admirer since the '70s. Woody was out on the edge from the beginning, (along with others like McCoy Tyner) getting into areas of harmony used more in 20th century 'classical', playing saxophone-influenced trumpet and intervals and scales other trumpet players didn't, keeping up with Dolphy as a very young player, composing meaningful pieces----etc. He was a voice and a strong one. But he also never forgot to look back. His grounding in what and who came before is evident in this clip of Stormy Weather (undated and no info on page, but I'll look into it). He holds back his own harmonic approach---very developed by then---to bring a performance steeped in blues and bebop harmony, even swing-era phrases. Maybe one or two bars he goes up a half-step from the tonic, and that's about as 'out' as he takes it. Sound to die for, and a solo much more about simple and logical melodic development, swing, and blues than harmony. Enough analysis, just enjoy it!: Also check out what he did with Bye Bye Blackbird, bowing to Miles' version playing with Harmon mute, and again reining in his harmony in tribute, perhaps. (I'll post the link shortly). (Edited for fact-checking).

Laz! Nice to see your cyber-face... I wish Dave good health and to play on (knowing, naturally, that 90 is not 30). I also wish Lee Konitz and the great Gil Noble, a true American hero, speedy recoveries.

Right. It's always right behind pop listings in Friday's Weekend Arts (movies and performances). I had the paper last Friday, and I swear I did not notice this. Let's see what happens next week.

Yes, they are 100% right. The academy (note the lower-case 'a') has always crapped on not only 'Latin' music (the name itself an insult, since it throws so many distinct musics and cultures ham-handedly under one roof), classical, (obviously) jazz---but just about any intelligent music trying to survive in the states. I've heard Mr. Sanabria on NY radio pleading this case and I can only add that if one removed clave from pop music, white, black, or green, one would remove its very spine. From the 'Bo Diddly Beat' all the way down through current times, take away the Afro-Cuban influence and you'd have some very weak remnants. This lame and insensitive move is a slap in the face to one of our highest cultural resources, and we who love and play music should not sit still for this. Call the academy and let your voice be heard! Far more importantly, and forgetting 'Latin Jazz' as a category, the Latino music in NYC alone has as rich a history as any art that could be named. Miami, Fla., is also a cultural capital. In recognition of this there have been many 'Latin' Grammy winners straight out of these incubating cultures in the past. What could the possible rationale for eliminating this opportunity now, especially when so many gifted performers (more than a few Sanabria students among them, I've no doubt) are rising in the ranks. The Grammies may be a beauty pageant of sorts, but a few on the wall sure help get a career into higher gear. Just ask Phil Woods. It's really strange, and I take it as prescient, reading this thread in the same week as the sad news breaking of the suffering of a major stroke by a hero of mine, Mr. Gil Noble. Of course we all wish him godspeed in his recovery, but to the point: ABC TV, on which Noble's Like It Is airs, has tried to cancel it for years, to tremendous---and effective---protest. People know Gil's show is the only place on commercial TV to get not only black, but generally more progressive views than offered on the news or pap news magazine shows. Though the show ought to be named a national treasure, I was reading a blog today dealing with black news and media issues, and the author was very concerned that ABC would use Gil Noble's health setback as the needed excuse to finally sink Like It Is, and he asked people to call ABC in protest as a pre-emptive strike. Duuuuuhhhh. Does anyone see the connection here?!!

Thanks for the site, Jeff. I just looked at Moose the Mooche and D.B. Blues. Thanks also for having the taste to include Harold Land and also the courtesy to include concert versions for us non-Bbers. transposing is cool, but why not make life easier?

Good article. Bringing it closer to home, jazz musicians, I was close friends with a much-beloved musician (I loved him very much myself) who was addicted to heroin. Said addiction definitely hastened not only his own early demise but a cocaine habit contributed to the placement in a nursing home and eventually the death of his wife (also a really nice person). I'm not sure if this guy was 'wired for addiction' as per some of the cited studies. I'm not a scientist who's done research of that type. I like to think I have a little bit of insight into people though, so I'll say this: This person had a lightning-fast mind. He played fast, reacted fast, liked fast tempos. It was hard to follow his speech, he talked so fast. The ideas expressed were brilliant, as was his musical output. He once explained to me in a candid moment the reasons for his addiction. I don't doubt them, nor would I fluff off all the sociological-psychological-environmental data. But I also always felt that the guy literally couldn't keep up with the pace of his own thoughts. They were spinning almost out of control and he needed a damper just to handle it. Again, not to simplify this, but I suspect this is far from the first brilliant person moving too fast in the cerebellum to discover H as an effective slower-downer....

One would hope the person's real friends/family/spouse would intervene. We know the hangers-on will continue to hang on and tell the star what they want to hear. The problem may be in part that in a lot of cases, water seeking its own level, the friends might just be equally screwed-up. Regardless of fame or money, I feel really bad for anyone so isolated---by their own design or the trappings of celebrity---that they have not one friend to kick their ass and tell them to go get help. That person is lost. But the well-worn cliche about no one being able to be helped unless they really want to is, obviously, true. So the celeb lucky enough to have caring friends to tell them but too far gone to listen or care is the most lost.

I'm pretty sure the one in the front row left is Tom Hulce in his Mozart wig, moonlighting....

Send him to Dr. Van Nostrand. Right away.

Guess so. And why the hell not?

And throw in Connie Francis. Screw it, throw in Annette Funicello!!!

These clips were the first time I've heard her. I think she's got the two mentioned here, Winehouse and Gore, beat by a country mile. I wonder where that huskiness came from in such a young voice. Another one bites the dust, I guess. I tell you, all the wrong people get laid and paid in this life

That would make him exactly like almost every in-demand arranger who bit off more than he could chew workload-wise. I'm not defending him, but it was common practice then. A lot of people would be amazed how many charts on well-known record dates of all kinds were 'ghosted', not to mention movie scores, TV shows---you name it. A lot of writers farmed out. It was just too hard for some of them to say no to the money and also there's the fear of not being asked again if you turn one down. It's well-known that Q did it, and he's been accused many times over for taking credit where it wasn't due, if not outright theft. I used to hear lots of grumbling about him at the Local 802 union floor, and from writers of the caliber of John Carisi. The jury's still out though, so I'm not gonna be a hanging judge on that one. Anyway, ghosting quickly became real work for really gifted writers like Billy Byers, one of Q's top ghostwriters. Bob Brookmeyer and at least one other arranger wrote a lot of a Ray Charles album assigned to, possibly, Al Cohn---I don't remember exactly. Gil Fuller did plenty of ghosting. So it wasn't a bad thing at all, just a neccesity.

Tal rushed when he played for his whole career. It had nothing to do with hearing loss. Being a humble and beautiful cat, he would tell pick-up rhythm sections 'by the way, I rush'. It was much more in control in the '50s, when he was at the top of his game and always playing, but it was always there and you can hear it. After the comeback in '69 it started to really be a problem. It made him hard to listen to after a certain point, a shame because his creativity never receded. Rather, it grew through the years. He was an improvisor who never stopped experimenting and 'playing off the top'. I think you're really noticing his harmonic imagination though, which was always to me his strong suit. The language was so strong it had a fluidity of its own. I think that harmonic insight and language did deepen and permutate throughout his life. It's not like his playing changed, rather it sort of graduated. The overall fluidity to me in later years went up and down accordingly as his chops did---like anyone else who's either in shape or not. Here's what I believe happened: Tal, like a lot of true artists, loved to play but had a real distaste for the music business. He was also a homebody and didn't enjoy travelling. He would go out for a while (after the comeback), then the pressure and the scene generally would wear on his nerves and he would pull back. This naturally lessons your confidence when you do go back out again. The nerves and loss of confidence would exacerbate the time problems. The funny thing is that when he played 4/4 rhythm----at any point in his career---it was always damn near perfect. Jimmy Raney's time, OTOH, was always great---even when his hearing loss was so advanced that on a gig he had to watch the other players' feet tap to get an indication of where the beat was. Also his chops would regenerate really quickly after a layoff.

According to that wikipedia article Quincy Jones produced, but didn't arrange or conduct it. Claus Ogerman did. Not sure of the article's veracity, but if I was wrong I should concede that. However, the more I read the sillier and less important in the scheme of things this song and its story seems. It's just another reason to shake my head over the dubious taste of large portions of the American public.